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Comment by Robert Burris on June 18, 2012 at 8:37

Wonderfull, Jeff, to help the handicap person is a blessing. Great work!

KnifeMaker Comment by Jeff Maron on June 18, 2012 at 8:30

Hello Halicon. Thank you for your comment. I am glad that the design may inspire a working knife for your mother. This design minimizes the use of the wrist and uses the larger muscles of the bicep and shoulder. You can really feel the difference. I hope something will work out for your mother. Just a note, this client prepares most of the meals for his family.

Thanks again for your comment.

Jeff

 

Comment by Halicon on June 18, 2012 at 7:35

Very interesting handle and the knife itself of course. I've been pondering many long hours about the best method to make a somewhat easy to produce handle for those with carpal tunnel syndrome, advanced stages of arthritis and the like.

I keep ending up with almost a saber guard grip where you insert your hand and let the last three fingers, especially the pinky finger be what the user has to exert pressure with and it's easy to transfer any movement away from the wrist to the elbow and let the muscle groups above do the slicing work without needing the classic pinch grip.

Many thanks for showing this knife, I hope you don't mind if I fashion a similar handle influenced by this project for my mother that suffers to a very advanced case of arthritis with botched surgery done on both hands.

Now just to find a species of wood that can survive such an "awkward" shape (in regards to the many angles). I guess it's time to let my woodworking tools get eaten up by some Lignum Vitae, haha.

Comment by Jan Carter on June 18, 2012 at 4:42

Kudo's to you Jeff.  For the initiative to design something innovative enough to solve your customer's issues and allow that person to do simple everyday chores we all take for granted with a knife.

KnifeMaker Comment by Jeff Maron on June 17, 2012 at 23:58

Thanks J.J. for the comment. This was one of the most gratifying projects I have done. My client with previous knives had a very difficult time cutting steak. He said that when he tried to use a standard knife that quite often the steak would slide around on his plate and end up on the floor. This knife has truly changed his life.

The angles on this knife were extremely challenging. For instance the blade is not directly in line with the handle. It is offset by approximately 5 degrees. The angle of the handle to the top of the blade is approximately 88 degrees. There were many other angles to consider. The fact that he had very weak wrists posed another challenge.

Now that I have stated all that, I must say that I love challenges when building knives and most of my orders are very specific.

Thank you for your comment.

Jeff

Moderator Comment by J.J. Smith III on June 17, 2012 at 23:30

It's great that you could design and build this for a person that's not able to use standard knives.

Accessability is an important factor to many people, that most seldom think about.